Staff awarded building number in five minutes, says probe team

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Five minutes, that’s all it took for the person to breeze through three logins and seven steps to assign corporation numbers to a two-storey building, the inquiry team probing the building number fraud has found.
While two data entry staff have been dismissed by the city corporation following the fraud, the lighting speed and expertize with which an otherwise time-consuming process was carried out has puzzled the officials. Even for seasoned officials, handling an eight-digit username and doing the process takes time.
In the case of the building at Marapalam, the person sitting in the corporation main office used the login of an official stationed at Thiruvallom zonal office to award the building number to a construction located in Kesavadasapuram ward.
For a new building, data entry, verification and approval followed by digital signature is done in a three-step process. In case of an old building, base data also needs to be entered and it makes for seven steps. Usually, this process is done at different time periods as each work has to be done by a separate official.
It was a tip-off followed by an RTI application seeking details regarding this building which really made the internal probe team dig deep into this particular file.
Initial probe had revealed that the building number was allotted but back files were absent. The team then collected a copy of the tax receipt from the owner himself and the owner reportedly informed the team that this was all he got.
There was no way to track the computer from which the first two processes data entry and verification could have been done. However, the Information Kerala Mission kept a log of the digital signatures and thus, the IP address of the computer and the frequent users were tracked down. There was also another giveaway. The speed at which the process was completed in five minutes negated chances of using multiple computers. Besides, only selected computers were equipped with a digital signature system and this narrowed down the search to two data entry staff who frequently used the system. However, questions still linger mainly because of the skill and speed at which the fraud was committed.
Handling Sanchaya Software is not easy even for experienced staff. However, awarding of building numbers after completing all steps in five minutes also opens up the possibility of the involvement of highly-skilled people who are well-versed in the technical process involving assignment of building numbers.